‘A timely and genuine contribution to the discussion of republi-canism ... distinctive.’
Richard Dagger, Arizona State University ‘Combining a lucid and accessible style with considerable sophis-tication of thought, Civic Republicanismwill be both helpful to students and stimulating to scholars.’
John Horton, University of Keele Civic republicanism has emerged as a leading alternative to liber-alism in dealing with the political challenges presented by the diversity and increasing interdependence of contemporary societies. It recognises that realising freedom requires strong political struc-tures supported by active, public-spirited citizens.
Iseult Honohan here presents a critical interpretation of its central themes – civic virtue, freedom, participation and recognition – and of the different ways in which these have been understood and combined in different strands of civic republicanism.
In Part I she traces its development from classical antecedents such as Aristotle and Cicero to its flowering with Machiavelli and Harrington, and to the diverse responses to modernity advanced by Rousseau, Wollstonecraft and Madison. She highlights the roots of the contemporary revival in the work of Hannah Arendt and Charles Taylor.
In Part II Honohan engages with current debates surrounding civic republicanism as an attractive way forward in a world of cultural diversity, global interdependence, inequality and environ-mental risk. What is the nature of the common good? What does it mean to put public before private interests? What does political freedom mean, and what are the implications for the political insti-tutions and practices of a republic?
Civic Republicanismis an ideal text for students of politics and philosophy, and also valuable for those studying this important topic in related disciplines such as history and law.
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
Part I
The Historical Evolution of Republican Thought 13
I The Primacy of Virtue: Aristotle and Cicero 15
II Freedom in Classical Republicanism: Machiavelli
and Harrington 42
III Participation and Inclusion in the Extensive Republic: Rousseau, Wollstonecraft and Madison 77
IV Roots of the Republican Revival: Arendt and Taylor 111
Part II
Contemporary Debates 145
V Common Goods and Public Virtue 147
VI Freedom: Non-domination and Republican Political
Autonomy 180
VII Participation and Deliberation 214
VIII Recognition and Inclusion in a Pluralist World 250
Notes 290
Bibliography 302
Index 321
The process of writing this book has brought home to me more clearly than before the many dimensions of interdependence.
I owe a particular debt of thanks to Fergal O’Connor for his teaching and encouragement over many years. Others who deserve special thanks for supporting me in this project are Attracta Ingram, Maria Baghramian and Maeve Cooke.
Among many others to whom I owe thanks, I am grateful to my colleagues in the Department of Politics at University College Dublin, especially to John Baker and Niamh Hardiman, who have always been ready with advice and help. Tom Garvin has offered encouragement and support at every stage. Valerie Bresnihan and Joe Dunne were good enough to read several chapters and offered helpful comments. I benefited greatly from discussions with and advice from Vittorio Bufacchi, Aileen Kavanagh and Bríd O’Rourke. Ailsa McCarthy provided research assistance in the early stages. Students in the MA class and tutors of my second year course cheer-fully endured and contributed to my process of clarifying these ideas. I received extensive helpful comments on an earlier draft from Richard Dagger and an anonymous referee. As new strands of republican thought proliferated, Jonathan Wolff waited patiently for the manuscript; Muna Khogali at Routledge was unfailingly helpful.
I should like to acknowledge the receipt of a President’s Award at University College Dublin; in the time this gave me, the funda-mental conception and argument of the book was initially developed.
Finally, my deepest thanks are due to my family, especially my mother, and to Patrick and Theo.
Civic republicanism addresses the problem of freedom among human beings who are necessarily interdependent. As a response it proposes that freedom, political and personal, may be realised through membership of a political community in which those who are mutually vulnerable and share a common fate may jointly be able to exercise some collective direction over their lives. This response, older than liberalism, has been expressed and developed by a variety of thinkers through the history of Western politics, and constitutes a more or less continuous and coherent republican tradi-tion. In this approach, freedom is related to participation in self-government and concern for the common good. (The political theory of republicanism is only loosely related to the issue of the presence or absence of a monarchy, which is the common use of the term republicanism.)
Republican politics is concerned with enabling interdependent citizens to deliberate on, and realise, the common goods of an histor-ically evolving political community, at least as much as promoting individual interests or protecting individual rights. Emphasising responsibility for common goods sets republicanism apart from libertarian theories centred on individual rights. Emphasising that these common goods are politically realised sets republicanism apart from neutralist liberal theories which exclude substantive questions of values and the good life from politics. Finally, emphasising the political construction of the political community distinguishes republicans from those communitarians who see politics as expressing the pre-political shared values of a community.
Influential in modern Europe and America until the late eight-eenth century, civic republicanism was, until recently, rather
overshadowed by the debates between liberalism and socialism. But it has become once more a focus of interest and discussion since the apparently sweeping victory of liberal democracy over socialism. Despite that victory, it is not the case that ‘we are all liberals now’. A new line of criticism has been developed by communitarian philoso-phers who stress the dependence of individuals on communal contexts, in reaction to what they see as the excessive liberal stress on individual independence. Simultaneously, liberal democratic practice has been criticised by political actors who call for the restoration of community, citizenship and moral purpose to politics. Contemporary citizenship is increasingly seen to lack depth and meaning for people who feel alienated from politics and discon-nected from the society beyond their personal relationships. So there are theoretical and practical movements to reaffirm community. But moral and cultural diversity are increasingly salient in our society. If a politics of individual freedom carries the risk of fragmentation, a politics of shared values threatens to be oppressive or exclusive.
Communitarian arguments attach too much authority to existing social relationships and identities in defining common goods. In most modern societies, people adhere to diverse sets of ends and values; existing social roles and relationships are often unequal, so to assume a common good between members of society oppresses those who are different. So liberals rightly emphasise that people can reflect critically on their social roles, but they distinguish public, political concerns too rigidly from private, personal concerns, and underestimate the significance and vulnerability of common goods.
In this book I argue that civic republicanism offers the pros-pect of an alternative to the extremes of the so-called liberal– communitarian debate, with a notion of political community richer than that of mainstream liberalism, and less homogenising and exclusive than nationalism and other forms of communitarianism. This represents an attempt to trace a way in which citizens might realise freedom more effectively than is currently achieved.
The value of historical theory
republicanism, which has been particularly historical in its approach, even though its precise historical roots are strongly contested.
If we can think of history (as E.H. Carr suggested) less as a straight line which makes our ancestors increasingly remote from us, and more as a winding procession, where our circumstances may bring us closer to some parts of the past than others, there are good reasons to consider the thought of earlier times. From a critical point of view, it may warn us against reinventing the wheel, or embarking on what appear to be radical programmes of social change while ‘trotting out the identical ideas that had been put forward at an earlier period, without any references to the encounter they had already with reality, an encounter that is seldom wholly satisfactory’ (Hirschman, 1977: 133). The study of the history of ideas may not resolve issues but it can raise the level of the debate.
In order to understand a theory it is necessary to understand the question to which it claims to be an answer. In different political, social and economic contexts theorists are concerned with very different questions. So it will be misleading to compare directly arguments on, for example, property or marriage in ancient Greece and nineteenth-century England. Yet, while contexts change, there are aspects of issues, such as the nature of freedom, the scope of government, or the rights and duties of citizenship, that are suffi-ciently general for arguments to be intelligible across time and place, even if they also have more specific applications.
Political theory tends to be more active in periods of social and political upheaval, when certain thinkers seem to have an especially acute apprehension of issues which do not arise so starkly in more peaceful times. Considering theories developed in other historical contexts makes us aware of the variety of answers possible to the central questions that concern us. Accordingly, looking at other answers to current questions may at least make us realise how specific our ideas are, and shake up our assumptions about what is permanent and what is subject to change in social and political life.
In addition, political theorists have often seen themselves as responding to their predecessors in a conversation across time. In picking up historical threads, modern philosophical interpreters need to be more sensitive to historical hermeneutics, both of context and of reference, than some of their predecessors. But historical theories may be worth reconsidering, particularly if they
were cut short because they lost the political battle rather than the normative argument. If economic, social and cultural circumstances rendered them irrelevant and favoured other theories, arguments that seemed to be superseded may be worth revisiting when circum-stances change again. Republicanism went into abeyance with the development of the sovereign nation-state, which accommodated the growth of commerce and of populations. If factors such as economic globalisation and environmental risk now reduce the appropriateness of the nation-state, alternative ways of approaching politics may need to be considered.
A civic republican tradition?
Specific problems arise in dealing with civic republican historical thought. Critics have cast doubt on the very existence and conti-nuity of a republican tradition. And matters are not helped by the fact that current exponents identify with different constellations of ancestors.
Centuries and civilisations separate Aristotle from Machiavelli, Cicero from Madison, and our world from theirs. Not surprisingly, given the range of historical societies involved, these theorists address different immediate questions. But they approach politics with similar concerns arising from the human predicament of inter-dependence; and their responses are structured in terms of the same cluster of ideas. Moreover, of all political theorists, civic republi-cans are perhaps the most self-consciously historical and classicising, in seeing themselves as the inheritors of the authors and political practices of Greece and Rome. Machiavelli, Harrington, Madison and Rousseau all expressed admiration for, drew on, and modified the ideas of their ancient and more recent predecessors in the tradition. Each indeed decisively redefined certain key concepts and their balance, in ways that shaped the path of subsequent arguments. But, as will become clear, there was significant continuity as well as change.
tradition as inclusively as possible, while offering my own more specific interpretation of the strands which it may be valuable to reappropriate today. I argue that there is an identifiable tradition with Greek and Roman roots, which crystallised in the late middle ages and flourished well into the eighteenth century in Europe and America. In the nineteenth century this was eclipsed by the more prominent movements of liberalism, socialism and nationalism, each of which absorbed some of its themes. Since the mid-twentieth century the tradition has re-emerged. But this tradition is consti-tuted not of a single thread but of multiple interwoven strands. While certain strands persist throughout, some are present in the early phases and become thinner with time; others are introduced at certain points and come to take increasing weight. In any case tradi-tions are always constituted or reconstituted in retrospect, and are as much a matter of affiliation as of genetic descent.
Elements of the classical account
A broad ideal summary of classical republicanism as it had evolved up to the eighteenth century would contain the following elements.
Citizens of a state are free if they are independent of external rule and internal tyranny, and so are in some sense self-governing. Republics do not come into being naturally, and without a political structure there is no basis on which people can form an agreement to live together; so they need a founder or law-giver to establish their basic institutions. In place of a single sovereign, there is ‘mixed’ government, in which social forces or institutions of govern-ment are balanced against one another, to prevent the domination of the state by particular interests and thus to realise the common goods of citizens. Freedom is guaranteed by, and compatible with, the rule of established laws in place of the will of a ruler. Citizens must be active, accepting duties and performing public service both military and political. In this, they need to recognise the value of what they share with other citizens. Thus they must cultivate civic virtue, or a commitment to the common good.
Since humans have private interests as well as those they share with other citizens, from the republican perspective the primary political problem is corruption. This is understood quite broadly. All political solutions are fragile and require continuous injections of energy to sustain them. People will always tend to be torn between
their private interests and the common good. Institutions too will tend to drift from their original purposes. Therefore the problem of creating public-spirited citizens may be addressed in a number of ways – through laws, training in a citizen militia, civic education and a civic religion. While social approval, or honour, is the reward for civic virtue, more forceful treatment also may be needed to constitute or restore a republic.
A successful republic demands certain material preconditions. Active citizens need to be independent. Thus they need to have property, but excessive wealth and economic inequality undermine political equality. Accordingly there may be measures to limit the accumulation of, or even to redistribute wealth. The republic is a specific community of citizens related by substantial ties and a sense of loyalty more like fraternity or friendship than agreement on institutions or procedures. Political obligation is not wholly voluntarily assumed, but rooted in the citizens’ membership of the republic. Given its intensity, as well as more practical difficulties, the scope of the republic must generally be limited in terms of size, numbers and diversity.
So classical republicanism was suited to small states where it was possible to envisage active participation by a significant proportion of the population. The conditions of citizenship were very demanding in terms of public and military service, and included the formation, or moral education, of the citizens by the state. To varying degrees it excluded the lower echelons of the population, women and those outside the narrowly drawn limits of the republic. It emphasised masculine and warrior virtues and was often devoted to military expansion.
The emphasis on common goods and civic virtue, and the ways in which these were formulated in the tradition, have led to charges that civic republicanism is inherently oppressive, moralistic, exclu-sive, militarist and masculinist. Any contemporary articulation of the theory has to avoid these objections. And it has to show further that it is not hopelessly idealistic or nostalgic in a modern world of extensive states and global economic and social relationships.
The civic republican revival
norma-tive political theory. The diverse strands of the historical tradition reflect a dispute about what republicanism means today and what it has to offer. There is, in effect, a battle for the soul of republi-canism, in which alternative historical strands have been marshalled to support the credentials of contemporary expressions.
Its exponents agree in reconnecting freedom with the common good of citizenship, but beyond this they differ on the central elements and their interpretation. In addition, in comparison with classical liberal theory, civic republican theorists tend to locate themselves explicitly in a specific local context both theoretical and practical. Many of these arguments have developed within debates about the nature and future of politics in, for example, the United States, Britain or France. This reflects an emphasis in republican thought on the need to develop political solutions appropriate to particular contexts. It is as if all liberal states resemble each other, but each republican state is republican in its own way.
We can identify three principal strands:
History of political thought Civic republicanism was put on the theoretical map again through historical scholarship which exca-vated and re-identified it as a coherent tradition. Two scholars have played a particularly important role in this rediscovery. Drawing on themes from Arendt, J.G.A. Pocock has outlined a continuing thread, from Athens and Aristotle, through Machiavelli and Harrington, to the American revolution. He emphasises the ideas of political participation, civic virtue and corruption, and the histor-ical specificity and fragility of republican politics. His work challenges a conventional view that the American revolution was guided solely by Lockean natural-right principles. Quentin Skinner traces a position with Roman roots, that crystallised in Renaissance humanism, was given its classic formulation by Machiavelli, and was further specified in the English seventeenth-century movement that included Harrington and Sidney. This has at its centre a ‘neo-Roman’ conception of freedom, as the status of independence guaranteed by legal limitations on a ruler’s arbitrary domination.
Constitutional legal theory In the United States, civic republican ideas have been invoked in a debate on the interpretation of the constitution and the functions of its various parts. This challenges a prevailing understanding of the constitution as primarily a set of
rules to limit power, regulate competing interest groups and protect individual rights. Legal scholars, including Cass Sunstein and Frank Michelman, have highlighted the way in which the constitution has a historical and continuing role as a framework for collective self-government, based less on private interests than on deliberation on common goods. This implies a stronger role for the judiciary, and a more active and deliberative role for all branches of government, than a neutralist liberal model supports.
Normative political theory Finally, there is a wide spectrum of expression of republican ideas in normative political thought. Different thinkers evaluate and prioritise the dimensions of republi-canism differently. Some are closer to liberalism, some to communitarianism. Some emphasise virtue and the shared values of a political community (Sandel, Oldfield). Others focus on a distinc-tive account of freedom as central to republicanism (Pettit, Dagger). For others, participation is the key point of a fuller democracy (Barber, Pitkin). Finally, recognition has emerged in debates in which Taylor has taken the initiative.
It should be said that not all the thinkers I discuss describe them-selves as republicans. Terminology can be very ambiguous in this area, and labels have often been applied quite broadly. So some clar-ification of how I understand these terms is in order here. If we can define liberalism very broadly as attaching particular importance to respecting individual freedom, communitarianism may be under-stood as emphasising the value of belonging to a community. Both of these definitions leave much room for different interpretation as to what constitutes freedom or community, and the implications these may have for politics. Republicanism is a specific variant of communitarianism, which values citizenship: membership of a political community, as distinct from other kinds of community based on pre-political commonality, of, for example, race, religion or culture.
citizenship as a means of preserving individual freedom, rather than as an activity or relationship which has significant intrinsic value. Strong republicans emphasise the inherent value of partici-pating in self-government and realising certain common goods among citizens.
After the liberal–communitarian debate
These republican expressions have emerged in the wake of the so-called ‘liberal–communitarian debate’. This debate originated largely in critical reactions to John Rawls’s magisterial interpreta-tion of liberalism in A Theory of Justice (Rawls, 1971). He attempted to derive a set of liberal principles of justice on which people who held very diverse positions could agree. This could establish certain principles of freedom and equality. But he held that, in a world where reasonable people can differ in their views of the good life, politics should not favour one particular way of life or moral perspective. Individual rights, independently derived and justified, limit the purposes or goods which can be pursued through politics. The state should aim to guarantee fair procedures within which individuals can pursue, and modify, their own conceptions of the good life, but not aim to promote any more substantive goals.
But, communitarian critics argued, it is not possible to distin-guish just procedures from substantive goals as conclusively as some liberals have suggested; liberal arguments for a politics of fair procedures rely on a specific conception of the human good, whether this is expressed in the fundamental value of autonomy or in a more complex account of justice.
These critics queried the conception of independent individuals that they saw as the basis of this theory. In their view, individuals are embedded in social roles and projects, central to their purposes, identity and conceptions of the good life. Either they cannot mean-ingfully detach themselves from these relationships, or they do so only with self-destructive consequences (Sandel, 1982; Walzer 1985; MacIntyre, 1984). These arguments shared some of the points advanced by Taylor on the preconditions of liberal autonomy that we see in Chapter IV – and indeed Taylor himself has been described as a communitarian.
In the course of this debate many issues were clarified, causing theorists on both sides to modify their arguments significantly –
though differences still remain. Liberals have taken on some communitarian points, often holding that they never denied these. But they still resist the idea that there can be a substantial common good shared among members of modern plural societies.
Thus Rawls advanced an idea of ‘political liberalism’, based not on a particular account of freedom, or conception of the individual, but on the need for tolerance in diverse societies (Rawls, 1993). People with very different views of the good life may be able to agree on political principles and institutions, which are not now seen as inde-pendent of, but as having a base in their overlapping ‘comprehensive doctrines’ or fundamental beliefs. This is not a ‘comprehensive liber-alism’, based on the primacy of the values of freedom, and it recognises the depth of the affiliations that people may claim. But it still relies on a clear distinction between the public and the private. The point of politics is to make possible the pursuit of individual projects. It claims that, in a liberal state where citizens hold many different beliefs, people may bring to political debates only arguments based in public reasons that all can understand and engage with (and not arguments from their own comprehensive doctrines).
Although communitarian arguments imply that politics should be more concerned with substantive goods and with supporting the social relationships essential to individual goals, the exact nature of community and the political implications of these arguments are unclear and contested, and for many it has remained primarily a critical position. But some developed more explicitly political appli-cations. Walzer, for example, has advanced an account of politics as articulating existing shared understandings among members of a political community (Walzer, 1985). Sandel, on the other hand, has outlined an historical interpretation of US politics as originally (and residually) a republican politics of freedom and civic virtue directed to common goods, in contrast to the politics of individual interests and rights which has gradually superseded it (Sandel, 1996). Other communitarians have refused to draw conclusions allocating any significant role to governments in promoting common goods (MacIntyre, 1999).
The foundation of republican theory is the understanding of human interdependence. Now that many liberals recognise the dependence of individuals on social relations and communal prac-tices, an awareness of interdependence as such does not radically distinguish republicans from liberals today. In particular, republi-cans have much in common with liberals such as Raz who see autonomy as the central political value, often referred to as ‘perfec-tionist liberals’ (to distinguish them from neutralist liberals who do not see liberalism as promoting any specific political value). Where the disagreement between republicans and liberals lies is in the political implications. Raz emphasises the social bases of autonomy, but identifies too many risks in promoting it through potentially divisive and oppressive political means (Raz, 1986: 427–8). As Kymlicka puts it, these viewpoints ‘disagree not over the social thesis, but over the proper role of the state, not over the individual’s dependence on society, but over society’s dependence on the state’ (Kymlicka, 1990: 230).
Rawls claims that his revised liberal account is compatible with one version of civic republicanism, in which political life is instru-mentally valuable in protecting the rights and liberties of citizens who individually pursue diverse ends (Rawls, 1993: 205–6). But he distinguishes this from the comprehensive doctrine of civic humanism, which views participation as the fullest realisation or ultimate end of human life.1
But there are more complex issues at stake than this distinction between instrumental value and ultimate value conveys. The civic republican arguments I will be considering in the second part of the book aim to go beyond these positions to address the issue of real-ising politically defined common goods, including the goods of citizenship, in a republican community of equals. Political activity can be intrinsically valuable without being the sole, or ultimate value in human life. A concern for common goods does not fundamentally and of itself conflict with freedom. There are also many questions about the nature and interrelations of freedom, civic virtue and recognition whose answers are not determined by Rawls’s distinction. Thus there are now many different expressions of republicanism, and a broader approach to the topic needs to be adopted.
As with many other theories, including liberalism and socialism, there are many interpretations of the central concepts and argu-ments and aims of civic republicanism. We shall see that the
definition of its central values is currently contested. But its expo-nents agree that republicanism and liberalism cannot be contrasted simply as theories espousing civic virtue and freedom respectively. Instead, it offers an alternative approach to understanding and real-ising freedom. This account of freedom (itself internally contested) may be seen as one of a cluster of core ideas that includes civic virtue, participation and recognition, each of which has been the central focus at different periods in the light of the central questions of the time.2Part I thus outlines the historical development of the
Introduction to Part I
How the cluster of core republican ideas evolved historically is the subject of the chapters in Part I. The approach is essentially chronological, but in each chapter one of the key ideas – civic virtue, freedom, participation and recognition – comes to the fore.
Chapter I
In ancient Athens and Rome, the key question is how justice is related to politics. The answer of the theorists of those times, who are the precursors of this tradition, is broadly that political life is concerned with the full development of citizens’ character; that through politics citizens come to exercise virtue, to which political freedom is secondary.
Chapter II
In the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries the key question consid-ered is the possibility of citizen self-rule as a viable alternative to sovereign power. For Machiavelli and Harrington the primary value of the republic is freedom, and virtue is understood in narrower, or more instrumental, terms. But the obverse of virtue, corruption, is understood as the primary threat within the republic.
Chapter III
In the eighteenth century the question is how far free government can be expanded to include larger numbers of equal citizens in vast
PART I
territorial states and commercial societies. Here the republican response to centralised despotism or elitism is more fragmented, and participation is understood in a variety of ways. For example, for Madison it is achieved by representative government with feder-ation and separfeder-ation of powers. For Rousseau only a radically participatory unitary republic is compatible with freedom, and this is threatened by large numbers and substantial inequalities.
Chapter IV
Introduction
Civic republicanism is a modern tradition with roots that extend deeply into the classical past. The exponents of the early modern tradition hark back to ancient theoretical and practical antecedents in Greece and Rome. Machiavelli, Harrington, Madison and Rousseau wrote in very different worlds, but all thought of them-selves as building on ancient foundations: the institutions of Athens, Sparta and Rome, the examples of their political heroes, and the ideas of ancient writers, particularly Aristotle and Cicero.
Aristotle and Cicero prefigure many elements of the recurring themes in later republican thinking. They emphasise the value of membership of a political community, and of freedom, contrasted to slavery, as a fragile political achievement, guaranteed by the rule of law and ‘mixed’ government. They connect this with political participation and active citizenship. They stress that the character, or ‘virtues’, of citizens are as important as laws in sustaining a civilised society. They see the role of law in shaping character in a way that is compatible with freedom. Finally they identify the state as a bounded community of citizens who share common goods, clearly distinct in form from the family and other associations.
In later chapters we shall see how the tradition has accumulated dimensions and reordered key elements as it has developed histori-cally from the ancient context. Virtueis the focus of Aristotle’s and Cicero’s political theories, and freedom, while important, plays a secondary role in the service of virtue. Both take for granted that participation in politics will be restricted to a fairly narrow citizen elite. Some issues which are central today are not explicitly
CHAPTER I
The Primacy of Virtue
addressed by these earlier thinkers. They assume that the state will be relatively homogeneous in important respects, so that citizens gain mutual recognition through public action within a bounded political community.
As well as common themes, we shall see that there are also signif-icant differences between the ideas of Aristotle and Cicero; and different expressions of republicanism can be traced back to one or the other. One strand emphasises political participation, and the other the rule of law as the basis of republican freedom. In recent interpretations of the republican tradition, the link to Cicero and Rome has been given greater prominence, but significant elements of modern republicanism can be traced back to Aristotle’s account of political life.
These political theorists expressed, refined and challenged more widely held contemporary beliefs about political life. In Greece of the sixth century BC, independent city-states of free, self-governing
citizens had emerged from kingdoms and tribal groupings. A sense of pride in the achievement of new forms of government, and of the novelty of such political arrangements, elevated the founding acts of men like Solon at Athens and Lycurgus at Sparta, and the deeds of the great men who sustained them. But the democratic polity of Athens and the militarily disciplined state of Sparta repre-sented two rival versions of the city-state that aroused the admiration of later republicans.
lived in households based on the family, political life was valued more highly than private. As Pericles is reported to have said, ‘We do not say that a man who is not interested in politics minds his own business, but that he does not belong here at all’ (Thucydides, 1972: 147). Commerce was left to resident foreigners, and foreigners could not easily become citizens. Although Athens was later to be admired as the cradle of democracy and public architecture, none of the major thinkers of the time articulated a normative theory that supported it. Many were notoriously hostile. Above all, Plato saw democracy as the rule of the poor and ignorant, characterised by excessive liberty and leading ultimately to the usurpation of political power by a tyrant.
In the closer community of Sparta, citizens lived from land granted by the state and worked by a subject race of helots. Family life was minimal: at an early age citizens were taken for education in military discipline; as adults they ate communally, and were organ-ised in military bands that were bound partly by homosexual ties. The criterion of good citizenship was martial vigour and devotion to the polis; those who could not meet this were subject to shame and social exclusion. The good of the political community was paramount over that of individuals or intermediate communities within it. Foreigners were excluded, and, in theory, the ownership of silver and gold was forbidden. Politics was conducted less publicly and less democratically than in Athens, although every citizen had some input in a popular assembly. Most power was divided between two hereditary kings, a board of five officials called ephors, elected in rotation, and a council of elders, popularly elected for life from a priestly caste.
Where Athens represented democratic freedom and political grandeur, Sparta represented civic devotion and military heroism. Its political system was praised as a system of mixed government by those who distrusted the fuller democracy of Athens.
These states were continuously at war either with external enemies or with one another, so that, even in Athens, the norms of civic commitment were intermixed with the competitive norms of warrior honour. But over time specifically political qualities and devotion to the common interest of the state were increasingly valued. The danger posed to political stability by personal ambition for power and greed for wealth was a key problem, giving rise to the conflict between factions (stasis), which undermined the delicate
balance of the constitution and led to cyclical upheavals between forms of government.
Ancient thinkers were very conscious that reliably ordered soci-eties that allowed people to live peacefully at a level above mere survival were uncommon and short-lived, and that constructing a political society was a precarious enterprise. Thus it was important to them to establish a connection between politics and virtue rather than force and self-aggrandisement.
In the context of these developments a number of issues arose centrally: What is the purpose of political life? Can power be exer-cised for the benefit of the citizens, rather than for the good of the rulers alone? What form of politics best realises justice and the good life for citizens? What virtues should citizens have – military or political – and how do the virtues relate to personal success? Is the good life achieved through politics, or independently of it? A separate but related question was whether and how far the mass of the people should have a significant say in politics. Are the common people too ignorant or too self-interested to be given power?
In attributing value to participating in political life according to norms of communal concern, Aristotle and Cicero stand against two other more or less contemporary views. According to one of those views, since only the powerful few can realise themselves, the demands of justice have to be discounted (e.g. the Sophists); according to the other, since justice or virtue are the only ideals worth pursuing, external success may have to be discounted (Plato and the Stoics).
Aristotle
Aristotle (384–322 BC) wrote in the closing years of the Athenian
democracy. Not himself a citizen of Athens, he came there from Macedonia to study with Plato and returned as a teacher of philos-ophy. He observed the vicissitudes of the democracy, had to go into exile when anti-Macedonian feeling arose after the rise of Alexander, and he died shortly afterwards.
exact sciences, requires specific experience and deliberation. In order to pursue the good in life, people need not just general princi-ples, but practical knowledge. In the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics Aristotle draws on a range of contemporary opinions, assessing their coherence and viability, so as to elucidate the indi-vidual and political dimensions of a worthwhile life. He concludes that politics provides an essential framework for developing and exercising the virtues that are the key to the pursuit of a good life. Thus in politics they must take account of the common good of the political community, of which they are part.
Material and moral interdependence in the polis
For Aristotle human life has natural goals that can be objectively determined and hierarchically ranked on the basis of our knowl-edge of human nature. Achieving eudaemonia – best translated as all-round happiness, or human flourishing – depends on realising the potential present at birth. How far this can be accomplished will depend not only on that initial potential, but also on external condi-tions such as health, prosperity and friends (external goods). Someone in dire poverty or serious ill-health cannot be described as flourishing even if they are unworldly, calm and resigned to their condition. But, on the other hand, pleasure, wealth or honour are limited and intermediate goals, which are less satisfying in the long run than exercising distinctively human capacities, of which reason stands above all.
Association between families, households, villages and polities rests in part on material interdependence between people whose different and complementary qualities promote their prosperity. But they are morally interdependent too. Because people are naturally undetermined as wholly good or wholly bad, but develop their char-acter through acting, the social and political relationships in which they live are crucial to their possibility of self-realisation. Thus, unlike the instrumental relations of a military alliance or business arrangement, members of a polishave an interest in the welfare and character of other citizens, with whom they jointly pursue what is good. ‘A state is an association by kinships and villages which aims at a perfect and self-sufficient life.…The association which is a state exists not for the purpose of living together but for the sake of noble actions’ (Politics1280b29–1281a9).1
Aristotle’s famous statement that ‘man is a political animal’ can be unpacked as follows. The political community is the highest, overarching form of association which facilitates development across the whole range of human life in a way that is not possible in the family or smaller social groups. A politics of free and equal citizens is possible because humans are not social just by instinct, but have language and reason (logos), through which they commu-nicate with others, think and evaluate: ‘the real difference between man and other animals is that humans alone have perception of good and evil, just and unjust; it is sharing these matters in common that make a household and a state’ (Politics1253a7) [my translation]. Politics requires not only theoretical reason, but prac-tical reason (phronesis) to determine what is best in particular circumstances for a community. In a political community of citi-zens, joint deliberation on questions of value is possible among equals, whereas relationships between husband and wife, father and child and master and slave are marked by ineradicable inequal-ities.2
This means that anyone who lives outside a political society is lacking something absolutely fundamental to human flourishing. Someone without a polisis almost like a wild animal, or an ‘isolated piece in a board game’ (Politics 1253a1). There is a deep, almost organic, interdependence between citizens and the polis, just as if you ‘separate hand or foot from the whole body, and they will no longer be hand or foot except in name’ (Politics1253a18).
Virtue and the good human life
In this context, the key to flourishing is developing and actively exercising a character exhibiting different kinds of virtue (arete), through a lifetime shaped by nature, habit and education. This is a broad sense of virtue which includes excellence or superiority of all kinds, as well as ethical goodness (with which virtue is now often identified), and specifically civic virtue (concern for the common goods shared by citizens).
others seem more incongruous to us, such as pride and magnifi-cence or self-regard. These are not innate qualities; they are dispositions developed through practice, which make those who possess them spontaneously inclined to choose to act in the right way.
‘Acting well’ is not defined in terms of acting altruistically instead of self-interestedly, but of acting to realise properly conceived personal interests. Thus, if you have to choose between earning more and spending more time with your family, this is not a trade-off between happiness and ethical goodness, but a way to realise both, since external goods are just a means towards time spent with family and friends. So acquiring and exercising virtues constitutes self-realisation, not self-sacrifice, and the good life is one of material and ethical success.
For Aristotle, then, virtue is not a matter of subordinating incli-nation to duty, but an ingrained disposition to act in a certain way that leads to success in every dimension; it is acquired by ‘educating’ the desires, and by harmonising them with reason. We need practical reason to act correctly, because what is best in any case has to be identified in deliberation, and cannot simply be deduced from first principles. Aristotle’s account of the human good has been well described as being simultaneously ‘thick’ (based on a very specific idea of what is essential to human nature) and ‘vague’ (not specified in detail for every instance) (Nussbaum, 1990: 217).
Moreover, simply knowing what is right is not enough, nor is simply possessing the virtues; a worthwhile life needs to be realised in action. Action needs to take place in a social framework, and requires social conditions for its performance. Becoming virtuous requires acculturation, example and education. A good polisallows us to realise goods and exercise the virtues. Thus an important part of virtue will be justice in the narrow sense, giving due considera-tion to the community, and not overemphasising one’s own claims.
Institutions
Some kinds of political regime foster the development of citizens better than others. Every polis has a guiding principle reflected in the character of its citizens. Democratic citizens are easy-going, citi-zens in tyrannies fearful, and so on. Political demands and legal
constraints can divert people into pursuing power, freedom or wealth instead of the virtues. Only in a good regime is the good man the same as the good citizen (Politics1332b32).
The institutions of politics are thus of great importance. States can be distinguished on two criteria: the number of those who rule, and the interests they pursue. A state may be ruled by one, few or many people, and it may be ruled in the interests of all (monarchy, aristocracy and democracy) or of the ruler alone (tyranny, oligarchy and ochlocracy or mob rule). The best regimes are those that govern in the interests of all; the others are deviant. However, all regimes are unstable, and the inherent flaws of each kind tend to lead to its replacement by deviant forms, resulting in a cyclical succession of forms amid conflict. Under differing conditions, rule by one man, by few, or by many may be appropriate. But in practice there is rarely one person who is so much superior to the rest as to justify his ruling in the interests of all. An aristocracy of the most virtuous citizens might seem the logically ideal regime, but it is diffi-cult to achieve. Besides, virtues and practical wisdom are more widely distributed among the population, thus justifying some participation for those not in the top echelons. But, at the other extreme, in a democracy the sheer weight of numbers tends to swamp all other considerations, and to deflect from rule in the inter-ests of all. In Aristotle’s view, the Athenian interpretation of equality of access to political life (isegoria) is mistaken, since people are very unequal in talent, wealth and other contributions to society. Political equality should be kept for equals (Politics 1283b13). Better regimes give the citizens a say proportional not just to their numbers, but to their contributions in virtue, talent, wisdom and wealth. Number is just one kind of contribution, mistakenly taken by democrats to be the only one that matters (Politics1282b, 1281a2).
a balance (let alone a separation) between institutions, social groups or powers in society, as the term ‘mixed government’ generally came to convey in later republican thought. It provides a share in self-rule for all classes of citizens; thus this form of government can provide a harmonious arrangement, and keep at bay the ever-present threat of civil war, or of conflict between social groups.
Participation
Just how much value Aristotle attributed to political participation is a contested issue. For some interpreters, Aristotle’s notion of the political nature of human beings means that participating in politics is the highest realisation of human nature. However, Aristotle’s position is not as clear-cut as this. Even if living in a polis is an essential condition for living a good life, it does not necessarily follow that self-realisation depends on actually participating in poli-tics, or that participation constitutes the best kind of life, or is even worthwhile itself.
We might accept that no one can be virtuous unless he lives in a well-ordered polis, but still not see actual political participation as important. Indeed Aristotle regards the contemplative life of a philosopher as an alternative way of realising one’s highest rational nature (Politics1325b14). This is a higher form of activity (with its own virtues), and one which requires a degree of leisure that political activity does not allow. Despite this emphasis on the claims of philos-ophy, it is not fully clear whether Aristotle concluded that the ideal of rationality was best achieved in a life of practical reason in thepolis, or in a life devoted more exclusively to philosophical contemplation. A number of other points are relevant here: Even the wise man must live in a political community, and will suffer from living in a bad regime. Even those capable of philosophy cannot attain it until late in life. And it is still not a complete life, as humans are embodied and social as well as rational beings, and need to act in the world. Thus the pursuit of wisdom does not exclude political participation as part of a worthwhile life, and politics is a significant arena for the devel-opment and exercise of the virtues. Political action affords a unique opportunity to exercise practical wisdom and justice, which is avail-able only to a citizen, not to any resident in thepolis.
So, participation is valuable in itself because it allows the exercise of reasoned deliberation among equals. To be a citizen, by
Aristotle’s definition, is to participate actively in deliberation, to serve in office and to defend the polis, though the qualification for citizenship is differently defined in different states. Citizens are engaged in collective self-rule among equals, which is distinguished from the rule of a master over slaves and that of a father over family by its temporary and alternating nature. Political rule is ‘over men who are free and similar in birth; the good citizen must have the knowledge and the ability both to rule and to be ruled’ (Politics 1277b7). And playing a role in politics confers honour on those who participate (Politics 1281a28): ‘rule over free men is nobler than master-like rule and is more connected with virtue’ (Politics 1333b26).
Participation is valuable in another way, because decisions made by a larger number of people are more likely to be correct. Though suspicious of the extent of political equality in democracy, Aristotle advances two important arguments for allowing wider political participation than the individual distribution of reason would support. First, the people are collectively wiser than any individual. Even those who are not particularly talented or virtuous bring a variety of perspectives that can cast light on political affairs (in the same way, he says, as a pot-luck supper is better than a meal cooked by a single cook) (Politics1281a39). Second, consumers in any area have experience which makes them extremely valuable judges of experts; it is the person who wears the shoe, and not the shoemaker, who knows if it fits (Politics1282a14). Thus people are interdepen-dent in their pursuit of practical wisdom, which is realised in interaction in political communication and deliberation. (Note that this epistemic argument for participation is based on the value of the outcome, not on an innate right to participate.)
None the less, attaching a value to participation does not imply that everyone is capable of participating in this deliberation among equals. Some fail to reach the minimum threshold of reason. This, for Aristotle, is true, to different degrees, of children (who have yet to develop reason) and of women (whose emotions distort their reason).3It is also true of some male adults who are incapable of
capable of active citizenship. Urban dwellers are more volatile and easily influenced than rural ones.
Thus Aristotle combines a belief in the inherent value of polit-ical participation with a distrust of the capacity for participation of a wide range of specific groups. Participation is valuable in so far as it allows people to exercise the virtues.
Freedom
In exercising self-rule citizens can become free. In democracy freedom (eleutheria) is a central value. But Aristotle’s own view is somewhat more guarded. Athenians valued freedom in two senses, both contrasted to slavery, a condition which they despised and feared. In the first place the term ‘the free’ describes ordinary citi-zens who are not otherwise distinguished by wealth, talent or position. This freedom is not a natural quality of pre-social individ-uals; it is the status or privilege of citizens, who are individually free if not subject to a master, and collectively free if not ruled by a tyrant or subject to another state.
Politically speaking, this democratic freedom has two elements (Politics1317a40). First, it means participating in self-rule, which is achieved by alternating in rule: ‘ruling and being ruled in turn’. In this way people can be ruled and yet not be subject to a master. Second, freedom is understood as ‘living as you like’. This entails personal freedom running in tandem with the former. Democratic citizens expect to be left in peace to run most of their lives them-selves. (Though this implies neither any fixed or predetermined limits to government, nor a theoretical claim about the indepen-dence of individuals, embodied in any notion of natural rights.)
If Aristotle preferred a mixed ‘polity’ to pure democracy, what are his views on freedom? As we have seen, despite his anti-democratic scepticism, Aristotle values the diverse perspectives and practical experience that ordinary citizens can bring to bear on poli-tics. So, while he has strong reservations about giving the many too dominant a role, for those who are capable the dimension of freedom constituted by participation in self-government is quite compatible with exercising the virtues in political life.
‘Living as one likes’, on the other hand, is much more open-ended, including the pursuit not only of valuable ends, but of immediate pleasures. Thus it is closer to ‘licence’. ‘Freedom to do exactly what
one likes cannot do anything to keep in check that element of badness which exists in each and all of us’ (Politics1318b27). Since the good life, not purely pleasure, is the ultimate goal for humans, it appears that ‘ruling and being ruled in turn’ is a more valuable kind of freedom than ‘living as you like’. So, while the contrast with slavery includes this sense of freedom, it is subordinate to what is good for citizens. For interdependent members of a polis, other people’s needs also set limits on how far you can live as you like.
For Aristotle freedom is valuable primarily in so far as it allows the exercise of virtue, realising human excellence. On this basis freedom is compatible with – indeed requires – the extensive rule of law. The polis not only allows the exercise of virtues, but can also foster their development, and shape the character of the citizens.
Shaping citizens
Because human character is neither wholly good nor wholly bad, and not fixed at birth, without proper laws and education people are liable to degenerate in various ways, setting the wrong priorities, or failing to develop the right habits.
Law To live a worthwhile life it is necessary to live in a law-governed polis. ‘For as man is the best of all animals when he has reached his full development, so he is worst of all when divorced from law and justice’ (Politics1253a30–4). It is better to be ruled by law than to be dominated by another person, as even the wisest of men can be subject to passions which make him volatile. Law is like wisdom without desire, since passions corrupt the rule of even the best of men (Politics 1287a23). As law is the product of reason rather than the arbitrary will of another, its rule is compatible with the sense of freedom as ruling and being ruled in turn, if not with ‘living as you like’.
Laws do not just constrain anti-social behaviour; they can and should shape citizens’ characters: ‘that which is genuinely and not just nominally called a state must concern itself with virtue’, and ‘all who are anxious to ensure government under good laws make it their business to have an eye on the virtue and vice of the citizens’ (Politics1280a34).
The greatest power of the laws lies in their educative role, in shaping the desires of citizens with regard to wealth, for example, so that they do not desire more than they need (Ethics1179). This is most important for young people, but even adults need the guid-ance of law to encourage them in the practice of virtues. On this view law is not excluded in principle from any area of life, though it is general in its provisions, and details that cannot be specified in advance have to be determined by officials in practice (Politics 1282a41). Freedom does not imply a right to be immune to law in any area, and indeed Aristotle envisages far-reaching laws on marriage, reproduction and education, among other things, since he believes that it is not oppressive for the law to lay down decent behaviour. If, for Aristotle, ‘the state’ is the focus of virtue, it should be borne in mind that this means the ensemble of the actions of the citizens, as there is no ‘state’ in the modern sense of an independently existing authority. Anything that thepolisdoes is through the citizens.
Education Because character is initially indeterminate, education in acting well is also very important. Moreover, the educative func-tion of law is paralleled by making educafunc-tion itself a responsibility of the state, an unusual step in contemporary terms. This does not primarily instil communal beliefs or values, but develops the virtues needed by citizens. Education develops their aesthetic and social awareness, and shapes their desires towards the goals of life higher than pleasure, money-making, technical skills and so on. As communication and deliberation are a key part of political activity, these should be encouraged by education: ‘each ruler can judge nobly when educated by the laws’ (Politics1287b15). Even military training has as its ultimate purpose the enjoyment of peace (Politics 1333a37). Education makes the citizens aware of their interdepen-dence and of the importance of supporting the common goods shared in the polis: ‘no one should think he belongs just to himself; he must regard all citizens as belonging to the polis, for each is a part of the polis’ (Politics1337a11).
Material pre-conditions of political equality
Virtue depends not only on institutions and education, but also on wider social and economic conditions. These include relative
prosperity. The extent of economic inequality should be limited, so that even less well-off citizens can be relatively independent of the wealthy. A successful poliswill have a large middle class. As well as independence, citizens need the resources for leisure to take time for political activity. In a democracy, a ceiling may be set to land ownership, and poorer citizens should be given employment and land to ensure their independence in interacting as genuine political equals with others (Politics 1319a4; 1320a35). But, in general, educating desires so that people are generous, rather than grasping, is more effective than equalising property. Thus property may be privately owned, but should be used in the public good, just as the wealthy were expected to fund the Athenian navy and public festi-vals.
Intensity and scope of the political community
The polis is a partnership of those who are politically equal and similar in important respects, distinct from family relationships. There is a strong bond between citizens, who should think of each other as ‘friends’. Aristotle advances a specific account of friend-ship in relationfriend-ships important to a good life, which is found at three levels – utility, pleasure and good. Some friends are valued because of the advantage they bring, others are enjoyed because they are witty or clever, but at the highest and more enduring level of friendship we value, and are concerned for, friends for them-selves, as parents are for their children. This is the kind of friendship citizens share, because they are linked not just by contractual utility or even pleasure in each other’s company, but by a concern for each other’s welfare, and the common goods they share. Thus ‘law-givers seem to make friendship more important than justice’ (Ethics1155a24).
life (MacIntyre, 1984; Mulgan, 1999). Others, interpreting the phrase differently, take it to mean that the polity is a forum for determining matters of just and unjust among those who have many perspectives (Waldron, 1999; Yack, 1993).
For Aristotle, the individual is not wholly submerged in the community. There could be too close a unity between citizens, as he thought was the case in Sparta and in Plato’s Republic. Aristotle does say that the concord between citizens does not depend on agreement of opinions on every subject, such as, for example, the nature of the universe or astronomy. It concerns practical agree-ment between citizens. It comes about when they ‘agree about their interests, adopt the same policy, and put their common resolves into effect’ (Ethics1167a18). This agreement is subject to deliberation, and does not rule out significant differences of perspective between citizens.
Aristotle sees these bonds and responsibilities as specific to each polis, the community that makes the fullest degree of self-realisation possible for citizens. Thus the scope of this community is naturally limited. Every kind of friendship has limits beyond which it cannot be extended without distorting its meaning. Citizenship and partici-pation are deep rather than extensive. A state must be limited in territory, population and social diversity. Fewer than ten or more than 100,000 cannot count as a polisat all. Citizens must be able to share and communicate among themselves, and have mutual knowl-edge of the character of other citizens to whom they are entrusting offices and whose performance they will be auditing.
Moreover, the hierarchical division of human nature means that the obligations of citizens to anyone outside the political commu-nity are very limited.
Thus Aristotle in practice offers a very elusive ideal. Even if he understands political participation in a free, self-governing commu-nity as being important to a life of virtue, he does so within the frame of a teleologically determined account of human nature, and appears to cater for a very limited cross-section of humanity, excluding by definition non-Greeks, slaves and women from any such possibilities. His theory seems to assume that all virtues can be in harmony, that virtue will be accompanied by success, and that the poliscan be harmonious. Yet Aristotle himself saw the precarious-ness of all such arrangements, and did not conclusively endorse the value of political life over that of contemplation.
Cicero
We are not born for ourselves alone, but our country claims for itself one part of our birth, and our friends another.
(Cicero, 1991: 22, quoting Plato Letter 9 358a) Three centuries separate Aristotle and Cicero. Even in Aristotle’s own time the self-ruling city-state became an anachronism, swept up in the Macedonian empire of Aristotle’s one-time pupil, Alexander. Before long Rome dominated the Mediterranean, and extended its rule to a vast territorial empire maintained by its army. Greece, though culturally influential, became a political backwater. The Roman republic was not only more extensive, but also more aristo-cratic than the Athenianpolis. There were three major categories of citizen: a land-owning senatorial class, a propertied class of eques-trians, and the people or plebs (as well as a large body of slave labour). Each class had its assembly, and in principle the people were sovereign, but in practice a narrow elite exercised power through the senate, which dominated the popular assemblies. Politics was marked by power struggles between the classes and among politicians who championed their different interests. Freedom was still understood in opposition to slavery, but expressed as a status guaranteed by law rather than as equal rights of political participation. A more exten-sive and impersonal system of law to which property was central covered all citizens, and was applied by professional lawyers and jurists. Important elements of modern republicanism can be traced to Roman sources. The term republic itself derives from the Latinres publica, the key term virtue from the Latinvirtus, and honour (the precursor of recognition) fromhonor, a central Roman value.
Cicero (106–43 BC) articulated ideas supporting a republican
studying philosophy in Greece, to impress on him how members of the Roman elite should serve the political community and achieve honour. It is his republican testament, written as a plea for govern-ment in the interests of the whole, to stave off the impending collapse of the republic before the power of Octavian who, as Augustus, would make himself emperor. When Cicero returned from exile to make his famous set of speeches excoriating those who were destroying the republic, he was condemned and killed.
When Rome supplanted the Greek city-states, philosophers tended to reduce the role of political activity in the good life. Cicero was greatly influenced by the Stoics, for example, who addressed a new set of issues. They replaced the radically exclusive particularism of the Greeks with a belief in a common human nature and a natural moral law. Their idea of universal justice denied the exis-tence of natural slaves and affirmed moral obligations to all mankind.
They debated the question whether virtue and success in life necessarily go hand in hand, or if virtue entails self-sacrifice. Perhaps because of the political upheavals that they had experi-enced, they were not optimistic that right behaviour would necessarily lead to external success. They concluded that virtue should be sought for its own sake, and no significance should be attached to personal advantage. In their more exacting account than Aristotle’s, virtue is sufficient for happiness. Freedom is a matter of subjective will rather than legal status or participation in rule. No losses can affect the virtuous man. They questioned the idea that virtue requires action, that political activity is intrinsically worthwhile, and that the political community is the highest level of human association.
Cicero, while influenced by the questions posed by the Stoic thinkers, elaborated a more wholehearted defence of the value and obligations of political participation than Aristotle. His writings offer a less systematic philosophical account of human nature and the human good than Aristotle, whose works he may not have read, though he was certainly exposed to his ideas.
Interdependence and politics
For Cicero, human beings are naturally social; they form societies not just to meet material needs, but because they are gregarious.
